Lindzen Bares the Real Inconvenient Truth

Telegraph columnist James Delingpole has a column up today covering the appearance of MIT’s Richard Lindzen before a special committee of the House of Commons—Holy Climate Inquisition would be a more accurate description—over in the UK recently, where Lindzen spoke candidly about the real scandal of the politicized world of climate scientists: it’s filled mostly with second-rate scientists:

Lindzen was asked what he thought of the “consensus” – at which point he got his manicured claws out:

“I think the majority of people working in climate science will go with the view that climate science is serious. I don’t think that would be surprising to anyone. There are very few people in any scientific field who say ‘My field is not serious’. Other than that there is so much penalty for saying that this is not an important problem that I don’t think people would go out on that limb, either.”

(Ouch!)

He went on:

“I’ve asked very frequently at universities: ‘Of the brightest people you know, how many people were studying climate […or meteorology or oceanography…]?’ And the answer is usually ‘No one.'”

And – warming to his theme:

“You look at the credentials of some of these people [on the IPCC] and you realise that the world doesn’t have that many experts, that many ‘leading climate scientists'”.

Was Lindzen suggesting, asked Tim Yeo at this point, that scientists in the field of climate were academically inferior.

“Oh yeah,” said Lindzen. “I don’t think there’s any question that the brightest minds went into physics, math, chemistry…”

This tracks exactly with what a senior figure in MIT’s climate science community (not Lindzen) told me several years ago: the best graduate students in physics there assiduously avoid the subject of climate change, because they are put off with the politicized conformity of the field, and regard it as a career dead end. No wonder the IPCC ends up with a former railroad engineer and pulp-porn novelist as its top “climate scientist.”